Oral irrigators are very popular dental hygiene devices used for maintaining healthy gums by delivering pulses or streams of pressurized fluid through a handle to a user's teeth and gums. While some oral hygiene devices include electronic motors or other active elements in the handle, there is a need for an oral irrigator which supplies pressurized fluid to the teeth and gums of a user without having any active electronic elements within the handle of the device. One such passive oral irrigator is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,399,089, filed Aug. 11, 1993 by Kim Eichman, et al., entitled "Oral Hygiene Appliance" which is assigned to the assignee of the present application and which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
In the design of an oral irrigator, one consideration involves the control of the flow rate of the water or fluid through the handle of the oral irrigator. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,399,089, for instance, a push button is biased outwardly by a spring, and when depressed, the push button moves the end of a rod inwardly to close an interior passage of a fluid flow conduit and thus cuts off fluid flow.
Rotary pressure controls used to control the pressure within an oral irrigator are typically located on the housing of the oral irrigator or the handle. When positioned on the housing, the rotary pressure controls can be inconvenient to use because the user has to reach to the housing of the oral irrigator in order to manipulate the dial. When the rotary pressure controls are located on the handle, the control is difficult to use because the user may have to move inconveniently his or her hand about or off of the handle in order to manipulate the rotary pressure control.
What is needed is an oral irrigator handle assembly having a pressure control valve and a stop valve, where the pressure control valve has a slide or linear control with linear travel to provide the user with visual and or audible feedback as to the pressure control setting of the slide control.